http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THOSE WHO BELIEVE that Hillary Rodham Clinton stands no chance of winning a
Senate seat from New York should glance at the existing congressional
delegation, which includes Charlie Rangel, Nita Lowey, Jerry Nadler and
Chuck Schumer. New York is the place that forced one of the nation's most
brilliant neo-conservative thinkers, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to check his
convictions at the door as the price of representing the state in the
Senate.

So it's far from impossible for Mrs. Clinton to succeed there.

Still, it was hard not to notice that flat Midwestern "a" in her speech as
she intoned "Thaaat's why I want to be your senator" -- a trope in her
announcement speech. That accent is a reminder that Hillary Clinton is no
ordinary candidate. In this first post-Bill Clinton election, the
presidential race and the New York race are both really about him. The
Gore/Bradley contest has no content except character. Gore is the true
Clinton acolyte: deceptive, brazen and slippery as an eel. He told a black
audience that his dad had been defeated for supporting the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 when in reality Gore Sr. had voted against it -- just one of a dozen
whoppers Gore has told lately. Bill Bradley is running as an anti-Clinton
Democrat -- more liberal, but also honest and sincere.

On the Republican side, John McCain is surging because he seems to be the
perfect antithesis of Bill Clinton in every way (personal history,
forthrightness, integrity). And while the Republican candidates disagree on
a number of substantive issues, the voters seem not to be focused on those.
They seem instead to be making an aesthetic judgment about who should
occupy -- and purify -- the Oval Office. If Gore wins the nomination and the
election, and if Hillary Clinton is also elected to the United States
Senate, the year 2000 will be recalled as the vindication of Clintonism.

Those are the stakes.

From the first paragraphs of her announcement speech, Hillary Clinton
showed the same capacity to cause listeners to roll their eyes that her
husband has. What else are we to make of her fulsome thanks to "Bill and
Chelsea" for standing by her? How can she lump them together like that? Are
we to pretend now that this is one, small, happy family?

It has always been a bit of a mystery why Mrs. Clinton is such a figure of
veneration among liberals. The long-suffering wife would not seem to be the
obvious choice for feminists seeking a heroine. But perhaps her appeal is
like Nixon's to conservatives. Nixon wasn't particularly conservative
himself, but he hated and was hated by the left, and that was enough to
endear him. Mrs. Clinton is a liberal, but more than that, she hates the
right and demonizes it whenever trouble erupts, and that is the source of
her appeal to the left.

She told her hand-picked crowd at the State University of New York in
Purchase that this was the largest crowd she'd addressed since her college
graduation, and that in the interim she'd become "a little blonder" and "a
lot humbler." The latter didn't show. Describing her tour of the state, she
reminisced about "all the work I did, first in Arkansas and then as first
lady, throughout America and in developing countries, to improve training
for workers and provide credit for entrepreneurs and bring jobs to areas
with high unemployment." If she did all of that, she should be considered
for sainthood, not senatorhood. But of course this claim is absurd -- as was
so much of her announcement speech.

Perhaps most politicians mouth boilerplate like "more police on the beat
and fewer guns on the street," but her discussion of the negative influence
of the popular culture was so one-sided it was a caricature of liberalism.
She decried the glorification of "guns and violence" but said not a word
about vulgarity or sex. Perhaps her Bel Air contributors would have rebelled
if she had.

Hillary Clinton obtained public approval as her husband's victim. She is
campaigning as his legatee. She speaks of "responsibility," but with every
proposal signals just how contemptuous she is about actual citizens. Mrs.
Clinton thinks she has governed when she has only watched.

Now it gets
interesting.

JWR contributor Mona Charen reads all of her mail. Let her know what you think by clicking here. Please bear in mind, though, that while all letters are read, due to the heavy amount of traffic, not all letters can be answered.